The conventional meme I gather is that Israel is blockading Gaza for the simple reason that it is mean and wants to punish the Palestinians there for no reason at all, and that security concerns are mere pretext for the blood-thirsty, civilian slaughtering military of the Jewish State.

The notion that Israel is and always was starving the Gazan people, is of course an absolute lie and a blood libel in many instances. But to my principal point this morning, I submit to you that Israel, and only Israel, is the one nation-state in the history of the world that would be accused of maintaining a prison of an entire population when that population has a border with another country that Israel has no control over. That nation is Egypt and it is run by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Here are the facts. Egypt continues to prevent the free flow of goods and people into and out of Gaza. Let me put it another way: Egypt, led by the latest sectarian dictator or sectarian dictator-puppet to enter the world stage, continues to blockade Gaza as Mubarek did. And, to make matters "worse" (or not), Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, is now flooding the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza with sewer water to shut down that trade, and they are doing so for--get this, security reasons.

There is so much to be sad about in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is so much to be sad about when it comes to Israeli policy specifically. But personally and to the extent I represent other Jews who cannot be accused of not listening to other viewpoints-- I just will continue without apology to turn off folks who lead with false charges of Israeli blockades or genocide or whatever. That dog don't hunt, and reacting to that dog is what I find myself doing more often than not. And that's cool, because we play with the hand we're dealt.

Here's the start of an article that the Times just posted on its website on the Egyptian use of raw sewage to shut down tunnels to Gaza:

The Egyptian military is resorting to a pungent new tactic to shut down the smuggling tunnels connecting Sinai and Gaza: flooding them with sewage. Along with the stink, the approach is raising new questions about relations between Egypt’s new Islamist leaders and their ideological allies in Hamas who control the Gaza Strip.

“Awful,” said Abu Mutair Shalouf, 35, a Palestinian smuggler on the Gaza side, watching workers haul buckets of sewage-soaked soil from the shaft of a tunnel flooded by the Egyptian military 15 days ago. “I don’t know why they did this.”

Advisers to the Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, say the answer is simple: they are determined to shut the tunnels to block the destabilizing flow of weapons and militants into Sinai from Gaza — a vow Mr. Morsi made with evident passion in an interview five months ago.

...."Everybody has noticed that since the collapse of (former
Libyan leader Muammar) Gaddafi's army, the amount of weapons
smuggling across the whole region has really increased
dramatically," he said.

"This is something that is really alarming because you don't
know who will be getting these arms. And when you see there are
anti-aircraft missiles inside Egypt and anti-tank weapons inside
Egypt ... you will question who is doing this and why.

"That is why we want to strengthen our western border,"
Haddad said, adding that this was the government's top security
priority now....

also interesting from that interview:

....Haddad made clear that President Mohamed Mursi would
scrupulously respect Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel, and
that daily cooperation with the Jewish state continued as
normal, even though there were no contacts at a presidential
level....

So the Palestinians find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Which is Israel, is it the rock or is it the hard place? You acknowledge Israeli abuses but you seem to be suggesting that the blockade by Israel is justified, or at least should be understood and should not be held against them, and you base that idea on some immoral equivalency with a whacko religiously controlled authoritarian regime which is doing the same thing on Palestine's other border. I disagree. Palestine's only innocent border is with the uncaring sea.

Who do you see advancing some meme that says that Israel is blockading Gaza for the simple reason that it is mean and wants to punish the Palestinians there for no reason at all? Is there really anyone with any credibility anywhere saying that?

"I just will continue without apology to turn off folks who lead with false charges of Israeli blockades or genocide or whatever."

Did you misspeak? What is false about charging Israel with blockading Palestine? And, how do you intend to "turn off" folks who comment on the nature of that blockade if you don’t happen to agree completely with the way they see it? A related question is: How, do you think, should people whom you see as deserving of being "turned off" in fact be "turned off"? And finally, another question: Is it fair, for an American citizen living in the middle of America and who is concerned with the I/P situation and trying to understand it, to give some credence to conclusions/opinions of Israeli Jews who have lived their lives and held respected positions of authority and action right in the middle of that situation as it played out over the years?

“Jewish self-righteousness is taken for granted among ourselves to such an extent that we fail to see what’s right in front of our eyes. It’s simply inconceivable that the ultimate victims, the Jews, can carry out evil deeds. Nevertheless, the state of Israel practices its own, quite violent, form of Apartheid with the native Palestinian population.” Shulamit Aloni, Minister for Education under Yitzhak Rabin, January, 2007.

“[In 1967] We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities. Passionately desiring to keep the occupied territories, we developed two judicial systems: one – progressive, liberal – in Israel; and the other – cruel, injurious – in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day.” Michael Ben-Yair, Israel’s attorney general from 1993-96, March, 2002.

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In the News

I have no idea or particular opinion about whether Garrison Keillor is guilty of anything, though it's always struck me as odd. But this somewhat but not quite illuminating article gums up the works a bit when taken as a part of a whole. The whole, of course, being accusations flying hither and yon with little if any explanation - even when they could stand some.

(THREAD) Yulya Alferova—ex-wife of Russian oligarch Artem Klyushin and a member of Trump's entourage in Moscow in 2013—is yet another witness who confirms, albeit inadvertently, Trump lied about what happened at the Ritz Moscow. The list of such witnesses is now very, very long. pic.twitter.com/BViILTZP67

On the hamster wheel of continual work, production and consumption, and Hebert Marcuse's.dreams.

[....] Marcuse did not live to see the 1980s, however [....] But his ideas lived on. In a 2004 essay for Harper’s magazine, for example, novelist and essayist Mark Slouka took to task the U.S. obsession with work [....]

One woman’s account of clandestine meetings, financial transactions, and legal pacts designed to hide an extramarital affair.....American Media, Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, had paid a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for exclusive rights to McDougal’s story ...David Pecker, AMI CEO, describes the President as “a personal friend... he never printed a word about Trump without his approval.”

Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

Was Trump diminishing the significance of the word treason, projecting onto the opposition (as he so often does) his own transgressions, by accusing Democrats of treason for not applauding him at the SOU?

Talking heads don't appear to have had much time to look at the details yet. Reporters are waiting on the formal announcement from Rod Rosenstein of the indictments. It is clear that they are directly related to Putin, not clear yet whether to the Trump administration.

A federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned an indictment Friday against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities accused of violating US laws to interfere with US elections and political processes [....]

[....] in a blow to President Donald Trump, the GOP plan to enshrine his four-part immigration framework came the furthest of any proposal from reaching the 60-vote margin needed for passage, failing by 39-60. A competing bipartisan agreement got rejected, 54-45, after a furious White House campaign to defeat it, including a Thursday veto threat.

WASHINGTON — Steve Bannon, who served as President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, was interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller over multiple days this week, NBC News has learned from two sources familiar with the proceedings.

When a transgender woman told doctors at a hospital in New York that she wanted to breast-feed her pregnant partner’s baby, they put her on a regimen of drugs that included an anti-nausea medication licensed in Britain and Canada but banned in the United States.

Within a month, according to the journal Transgender Health, the woman, 30, who was born male, was producing droplets of milk. Within three months — two weeks before the baby’s due date — she had increased her production to eight ounces of milk a day [....]

President Trump endorsed a 25-cent gas tax hike to pay for infrastructure at a White House meeting this morning with senior administration officials and members of Congress from both parties, according to two sources with direct knowledge. Trump also said he was open to other ways to pay for infrastructure, according to a source with direct knowledge.